Backcountry
Conditions Report
Report from Tuesday, May 24th, 2022
It had been about three weeks since I had been skiing, so I was pumped to be able to hit up Timberline Lodge for some late May turns.
I checked their website the night before and found out the lifts start spinning at 8 AM, not 9 AM like I thought. I made a plan with my friend Walt to get up there a little earlier. The forecast called for scattered clouds in the morning and then increasing during the day. The high temperature was projected to be in the mid-forties.
Definitely spring skiing.
When we got to the resort, there was not a cloud in sight.
We had plans to ski the resort as well as do some touring above the lifts toward the summit of Mt. Hood. Given the strong May sun, we were worried it may soften the snow too quickly and we would miss the perfect corn snow window.
We decided to take a run to test the surface conditions. It was hard and fast. Definitely froze overnight. The vibrations from the corduroy gave my feet a nice massage.
We took one more run, then jumped on the Palmer Lift to get as high as we could before we had to start skinning.
After about an hour of skinning, we got to the top of Illumination Rock.
The snow was still hard, which had made for good skinning, but it wasn’t ready for skiing yet. We could tell it was softening up, but some wind was keeping the conditions winterlike.
We ate a snack and took in the views.
Looking out toward the south we could see Mt. Jefferson and the North Sister in Central Oregon. Over on the north side we could see Mt. St. Helens, which had just celebrated its 42nd anniversary of when it erupted.
As we waited, the forecasted clouds started to come in. We were worried that they would cause the surface to refreeze, so we decided it was time to ski.
The descent was fun, but not the soft corn we had hoped for. It got softer the further down we skied.
We re-entered the resort and ripped a silky soft groomer down to the bottom of the Stormin’ Norman lift.
Down lower it had softened up considerably and we spent the rest of the day skiing softened snow on The Magic Mile and Palmer Lift. The skiing was good. The views were fantastic. The stoke was high, and Timberline is set up well for an awesome summer of skiing.
Snow Numbers
Forecast
